Abscess

Good morning kiss. Their teeth glance. Clack of June bugs against pane. On the porch a young man in the full sun rocking. Jars incubate tomato plants. His mother sweeps the dirt yard away from flowering vinca and bottle tree. Straightens up, one-eyed by ragged hens. As her boy ambles away to the steady pulse in his skull. The cattle gate swinging open behind him. She takes a headache powder and it is nineteen and twenty seven. The James overruns its levee, backs up the Blackwater. Nineteen and twenty nine: she reads his postcard, the tobacco crop burns. Nineteen and thirty, drought. Long limp bags drag through fields. The Lord whistles for the fly. Revival tents threaten a rain of scorpions. To cure her hiccups, the woman sees a hypnotist. Promptly coughs herself to death. In pungs marked men ride. The son is blown away. No one returns in this story. No one escapes. The tribe is glued together for ruination, friends. There is no more time, there is no way out.